This afternoon, if you'll turn in your Bibles with me to Psalm 121. We'll be looking at the whole Psalm together. Verses 1 to 8. And the thing that I want to bring to your attention here this afternoon in this message is that you and I, we ought to be thankful for the Lord's keeping us. His keeping power, His keeping our soul. What a wonderful thing it is to think about the Lord watching over us day and night, which is what he does. Let's bow together for prayer. Father, thank you for this time around your word this afternoon and in light of Thanksgiving being celebrated by our nation this week. We want to receive these words with an eagerness that you would come to our heart and show us just how much you truly love us and care for us as your people, that you are our keeper, even as these verses tell us. So help me, Lord, to open this up to your people this afternoon so that they will benefit by it, so that we will all grow in our understanding in these things that are mentioned here. In Jesus' name we ask it, amen. Psalm 121, a song of ascents. I will lift up my eyes to the hills or the mountains from whence comes my help. My help comes from the Lord, who made heaven and earth. He will not allow your foot to be moved or to slip. He who keeps you will not slumber. Behold, he who keeps Israel shall neither slumber nor sleep. The Lord is your keeper. The Lord is your shade at your right hand. The sun shall not strike you by day, nor the moon by night. The Lord shall preserve you from all evil. He shall preserve or keep your soul. The Lord shall preserve or keep your going out or guard your going out and your coming in from this time forth and even forevermore. So here in this Psalm in verse four, the Lord God is described as the keeper of Israel. We know that these verses which he is speaking of here is he's speaking of his keeping, they relate to us as Gentiles, just as much as the Jews, because Jesus Christ has broken down the barrier between Jew and Gentile, and he has made us into one spiritual people. And since this is the case, we can apply these verses to ourselves, because we know that through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, we are a part of God's spiritual Israel. The Lord's keeping of his people is described for us here in three wonderful ways. First, the Lord God is always there to keep your foot from slipping, verse three. Second, the Lord God is continually protecting you through the mediation of his son, verses four to seven. And third, the Lord God is continually guarding. You're going out and you're coming in, verse eight. So as I relate these to you, I would have you to remember that the Lord Jesus Christ died in order that these things would become a reality in your everyday experience. First of all, the Lord God is always there to keep your foot from slipping, verse 3a. The psalmist begins this psalm with a holy resolution of what he will do. He will lift up his eyes to the mountains or the hills, as our translation, the New King James, says that he knows that this is where his help comes from. He's not saying that his help literally comes from the physical mountains and hills that he's gazing at. They might afford him an earthly protection from his enemies at times, but that's not how he is thinking of them. He's saying that his faith is strengthened by what he's looking at. He's actually looking up and he's seeing the mountains, but he is at the same time looking beyond them by faith to God. He cannot see God with his physical eyes, but he can see him with the eyes of faith, with the eyes of his heart. He will not allow your foot to slip or to be moved. He who keeps you will not slumber. Behold, he who keeps Israel shall neither slumber nor sleep. So the person who believes in the Lord Jesus Christ is saying to the Lord God, I want to have a new life. I want to be forgiven of my sins. I want to walk with Jesus upon the path of righteousness. So if you believed in the gospel that Christ died for your sins, died so that your sins could all be forgiven, if you have really sought the Lord so that this would become a reality in your life and heart, then you are saved by the Lord. But now ask yourself, what will keep me from going back to my old lifestyle of sin? Who will keep me on this path of righteousness? and keep my foot from slipping back to the old paths of sin. Once again, it's the Lord Jesus Christ. He will not allow your foot to slip. I want you to turn with me over to Psalm 40, and you'll see the basis of this. I seem to be using this Psalm a lot lately in my sermons, but there is a reason for that. This is a Psalm that speaks not only of David, but also of David's Lord. Psalm 40, I waited patiently for the Lord and he inclined to me and heard my cry. He also brought me up out of a horrible pit, out of the miry clay and set my feet upon a rock and established my steps. He has put a new song in my mouth a song of praise to our God. Many will see it in fear and will trust in the Lord. Blessed is that man who makes the Lord his trust and does not respect the proud, nor such as turn aside to lies. Many, O Lord my God, are your wonderful works which you have done. And your thoughts toward us cannot be recounted to you in order. If I would declare and speak of them, they are more than can be numbered. So there's a care that's being extolled here by David, and it's a care which God exercised toward him personally. It's a watch care over his life. It's a watch care that extends to all of God's dear people. And God, I'm trying to show you, has a very personal care for all those whom he has chosen in Christ, for all those who trust in his son for their salvation. This watch care consists first in God's showing you the truth about your own righteousness. Now that's something that we need to see, don't we? We need to see that God does show us the truth about our own sinfulness and our own righteousness. This care consists in this, of your being shown the truth about your own sinfulness and the consequences of it, so that you will begin to pray and cry out to God for his mercy to be shown to you. Now, sometimes even after a person is converted to Christ, they do not see their sins as well as they should. They do not see where they are weak in relation to temptation. Sometimes a true Christian does not know the power of indwelling remaining corruption in their heart. And so they think that if the guilt of sin is gone, that also the power of sin is also gone. Perhaps also they did not realize after they were converted, as much as they should have, that sin's dominion over them was broken. It was taken away when they first came to Christ. You're no longer a slave to sin. You do not have to sin. But still you must understand that sin will try to crawl up, crawl back up on the throne of your life. and try to gain control to rule over you once again. Now most true Christians know that Christ is ruling and reigning over them now. But they simply do not suspect the strength of the spiritual battle that lays before them after they first believe. And so they come to find by sad experience that they may fall into sin if they will not guard their heart. with all diligence. So I'm trying to show you that you must still continue to cry to God for his grace and his mercy to be extended to you in relation to your daily battle against the sins of your flesh. You must continue to cry to God that he will help you to overcome the world and even your own flesh, as well as the devil. Do you know the reality of this? in your own personal experience. But if you do not, perhaps you do not really understand or know your own heart as you ought to know it. Yet I want you to know that God is the best of teachers, just as I read to you in the scripture reading. It says in Psalm 25, eight to 10, good and upright is the Lord. Therefore he teaches sinners in the way. The humble or the meek, he guides in justice and the meek he teaches his way. All the paths of the Lord are mercy and truth to such as keep his covenant and his testimonies. But what about encouragement? What is your greatest encouragement in relation to this keeping covenant with God? Well, it is that God is your keeper. and that he will not have your foot to slip. That is, fatally and finally slip, he keeps you by the grace of Christ. And he will rescue you when you have fallen. Even if you are faithless, it says in the book of 2 Timothy, he is faithful for he cannot deny himself. And thinking about Psalm 40 here once again, it says in verse four, how blessed therefore is the man who makes the Lord his trust. In other words, he delivered David. He rescued him from himself so that his foot would not slip forever. And I'm saying that he does this for all of his elect people in relation to their prayers. He keeps them in relation to their own confession of their own sins. Now, David does not mention his sins directly at first here in this psalm, but he does mention them later in verse 14 that wicked men had been seeking his life. Proud men who turned aside to lies had come to lay in wait for his life. And he was hounded by these men. And David describes the consequences of his sins as a horrible pit, he says in verse two. He sees himself as having fallen into it, and he is stuck in the miry clay at the bottom of it. But he sees the pit of the consequences of his sins as so much greater as he views himself in the sight of the holy God. Listen to verses 11 and 12. So he knows and he believes that God alone is the keeper of his soul. He says innumerable evils have surrounded me and my iniquities have overtaken me so that I'm not able to look up They're more than the hairs of my head, therefore my heart fails me. But I want you to see that because God was his keeper, he had pulled David up out of this pit of sin. And he'd even watched over him in regard to the consequences of his sin. God had established his steps on the path of righteousness. He had put a new song in his mouth, even a song of praise. to his God. So he would keep, God would keep his soul, he would do him good, even through this terrible, trying time in his life, the Lord had become his keeper. And David would praise him and extol the Lord for this. In verse five, he says, many, O Lord, my God, are your wonderful works, which you have done in your thoughts towards me, cannot be accounted to you in order, recounted to you in order. If I would declare and speak of them, they are more than can be numbered." Now truly, this is the Lord keeping his people. It is based upon his faithfulness to himself, his covenant, and his promises. So David had all things providentially ordered for him by God. And God was watching over him in all these things. But the basis of his keeping is found in verse six of this psalm. It says, sacrifice and offering you did not desire. This is Psalm 40. You, my ears you have opened, burnt offering and sin offering you did not require. So no ceremonial sacrifices or offerings would do for this. Then I said, behold, I come. In the scroll of the book it is written of me. I delight to do your will. Oh my God, your law is written within my heart. So this is not written merely of David's understanding of himself. He was indeed the man after God's own heart. But how did God keep him? during these times of his sins. He did so through what Christ did, what Christ was going to do 1,000 years after the Psalm was written on the cross. But all that was being applied to David even then. Do you see how great this salvation is? God watched over him. He kept him on the basis of sovereign love and grace. David saw this by faith. All believers, Old Testament and New, must see this by faith. That is, God is keeping you. Verse 16 says, let all those who seek you rejoice and be glad in you. Let such as love your salvation say continually, the Lord be magnified, but I am poor and needy, yet the Lord thinks upon me. You are my help and my deliverer. Oh, do not delay, oh my God. So I wonder if you realize just how great the Lord's care and keeping power are towards you. Oh believer, you may be poor and needy, but the Lord is thinking upon you. He says here, he is thinking upon you every moment of every day to do you good. And what ought your attitude to be then if you have been praying and seeking the Lord for his keeping help? It ought to be that the Lord would be magnified by you. It is that you would have all the things that he is doing for you through your Lord Jesus Christ to be seen in a greater and greater size in your mind and in the minds of other people around you. May the Lord be magnified. This is how you come to have a right attitude in all of your trials. You pray that the Lord will be seen as great. How big a God do you have? Is there anything too great for him, too difficult for him? Let us remember the words of Micah 7, 18 and 19. Who is a God like you? pardoning iniquity and passing over the transgression of the remnant of his heritage. He does not retain his anger forever because he delights in mercy. He will again have compassion on us and will subdue our iniquities. So the Lord is the only one who can do this great thing to subdue your iniquities, but he shall do that very thing because he is your keeper. And so let us be thankful that it is so. We need to rejoice today that God's grace is working in us to keep us from falling into sin. Even so, you should take nothing of your faith and obedience for granted. You should remember the importance of humility and of prayer so that you won't sin. And then secondly, the Lord is continually protecting you through the mediation of his son. Verses three, B and four, he who keeps you will not slumber. Behold, he who keeps Israel shall neither slumber nor sleep. So having listened to all I've said to you up to this point, you might say to me, but I am not as watchful against the sins of my heart as I should be. No doubt that's true, but there is one who is ceaselessly watching. And he is not watching over you to condemn you. He is watching over you to save you and to deliver you from these hard sins of yours. He's watching over you to do you good if you are trusting in Jesus. He who keeps you will not slumber. Behold, he who keeps Israel shall neither slumber nor sleep. So this promise is not here simply for the protection of Israel from their enemies by Jehovah's ceaselessly watching over them on their behalf. It's also been placed here for the New Testament people of God so that you might know and understand that the Lord God is ceaselessly watching over you. He's tireless in this. He doesn't feel the least bit tired. in regard to watching over you. What man, if he's a guard on watch, if he's been watching for a long time, in the middle of the night, when everyone else is asleep, does not feel tempted to let down his guard and his watch? He's got to steel himself in his determination to keep awake. But I want you to see that the Lord's strength in watching over you and over me is never diminished. He never grows tired of watching over you, his loved one. We may grow very weary in watching and praying, but who keeps you, he who keeps you will not slumber. So if you will recall, on the night in which our Lord Jesus was betrayed, He had come into the garden of Gethsemane to pray and he asked his disciples to watch with him. But they could not do it. He came to them a little later and found them sleeping and said to Peter, what, could you not watch with me one hour? Watch and pray lest you enter into temptation. The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak. So there the disciples were wanting to do what was right, but finding themselves falling asleep. And so he went away a second time, it says, and prayed and came back a little later and he found them asleep again. It says, for their eyes were heavy. And in Mark, it says that when he woke them and confronted them with their inability to watch for even one hour, that they did not know what to say. In Luke's gospel, it says that he found them sleeping for sorrow. So what does that tell us? It tells us that there are many things that there are truly spiritual, things which are of great importance and significance to God in terms of our obedience to him, that we as believers are not able to do. Even when we want to do them, even when we might be resolved to do them. And I want you to see that Christ did not condemn his disciples and repudiate them at that critical hour. No, instead he went to the cross and died for them there. That was Christ's keeping of them. He prayed for them in John 17, verse 12. While I was with them in the world, Father, I kept them in your name. Those whom you gave me, I have kept, and none of them is lost except the son of perdition that the scripture might be fulfilled. Jesus did reprove them in the garden. He said to them, why do you sleep? Rise and pray, lest you enter into temptation. But he does not make their perfect obedience in this matter the condition of his keeping them. No, his perfectly keeping them rests upon his own redemptive work. And his redemptive work included the prayers that he prayed for his disciples to be kept as he went to the cross. It was because of what he would do there and his sufferings on our behalf, which would establish our being kept by God. Christ uses means in his keeping of us during times of temptation. He gives us grace to abide in the truth of his word. He keeps us in that path by righteousness, by showing us verses in his word, which will strengthen our faith in learning to do God's will. Indeed, he died for this very thing. that we might be crucified to the world. And he died in order that we might put off the sins of the flesh. He died so that the ruler of this world would be cast out and that his works might be destroyed in us. So this is why you should be so very thankful for God's keeping power. Ultimately, he will keep you in the faith. If yours is a true and saving faith from the beginning, he will keep you. He will go on to keep you from all evil and to keep your soul because of his great faithfulness. Unless the Lord builds the house, they labor in vain who build it. Unless the Lord guards the city, the watchman stays awake. in vain, but the Lord will keep your soul. And then third, the Lord God is continually guarding your going out and your coming in. Verses five to eight, the Lord is your keeper. The Lord is your shade on your right hand. The sun will not smite you by day, nor the moon by night, the Lord will protect you from all evil. He will keep your soul. The Lord shall guard new American standard. You're going out and you're coming in from this time forth and even forevermore. So when the Lord brought the children of Israel out of Egypt, he did not lead them directly into the promised land. It was because of their sin of unbelief that he led them instead into the wilderness for 40 years. But in his mercy and because of his love, he gave them the pillar of cloud to protect them by day and the pillar of fire by night. And these were not only symbols of his guiding them, preserving them and keeping them, they were tangible realities to them. The Lord would come down and speak to them. in the pillar of cloud. The Lord would literally protect them by the pillar of fire. He would shade them from the heat of the sun by the pillar becoming shade for them in some general physical sense. He would warm them and give them light by night by the pillar of fire. And in this way, He was their keeper. So these are pictures of what God does for us in Christ. In Christ, God has come down and spoken to us. In Christ, God has become our shade on our right hand. He is, as Matthew Henry says it, our umbra, our shadow. He says God promises to be their umbra, their shadow, to keep as close to them as the shadow does to the body, and to shelter them from the scorching heat as the shadow of a great rock in a weary land. So this is what God does for us, Christ's church, and every member of it through the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ. In our Lord Jesus Christ, he leads us through the wilderness of this world, and by his presence, with us, he protects us, and he lights our way before us. So we do not walk in darkness. He watches us and goes with us and goes before us. And he guards our going out and our coming in all through our days here upon the earth and brings us safely to himself when we die. What is most important of all is that he keeps us from all evil. He keeps our soul. And the apostle Paul said in 2 Timothy 4, 18, and the Lord will deliver me from every evil work and bring me safely to his heavenly kingdom. To him be glory forever and ever, amen. So let us remember with thanksgiving that if God saved us, then he is well able to keep us. Let us remember this with joy for the joy of the Lord is our strength. And let us then with a thankful heart, joy and rejoice and press on to know the Lord. Let's pray together. We thank you Father for this time around your word where we have seen so plainly that you are our keeper. How we do praise you for this. We admire your providential care over our life at every point and we pray that we would be found walking worthy of all that you have shown us in regard to truth here this afternoon. May it be that we realize that you are in us and with us and watching over us day by day all the way to heaven and may it encourage us to give you thanks Not only at the time of Thanksgiving coming this week, but each and every day of our lives and our hearts and our minds, we pray it in your name. Lord Jesus, amen.